


Auld Lang Syne

by trinasong



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: Character Study, F/M, I love trina with my whole heart, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, In a way, New Year's Eve, in trousers era, she deserves so many good things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:35:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21671578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trinasong/pseuds/trinasong
Summary: It’s ten minutes to midnight now, and she aches. She aches to be wanted, and touched, and cherished. She wants to fight back, and scream, and cause a scene, and break a plate, but that’s not her life.—a sort-of (overtly poetic) character study, focused on trina and her tendency to hold onto the past, and her reflection of the year on new years eve, 1976
Relationships: Marvin & Trina (Falsettos)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 30





	Auld Lang Syne

**Author's Note:**

> i’ve had this one in my drafts for months. hopefully you enjoy it, and my interpretation of trina and her relationship with marvin, herself, her past and her future. i love this lady very much.

_For days long ago, my dear,_

_For days long ago,_

_We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet, my dear,_

_For days long ago._

  
  


New Year’s Eve, December 31st, 1976.

_‘It isn’t all that’_ she thinks to herself. In fact, it _isn’t_ all that. Another year, another futile attempt at _‘fixing us’,_ another bottle of red. That’s two, now. Or perhaps it’s three.

_‘One for every year I’m stuck in this goddamned house.’_

Well, that way, she’d be drinking herself to death. Two becomes one. Wedding, or wine? She’s spent too long blurring out her wedding vows with a couple glasses before bed. Before breakfast. After doing the laundry. Perhaps she should’ve bought champagne. It is New Year’s Eve, after all.

He’s out. Not that it’s anything miraculous. He’s out most of the time. She sits, demure, reserved and wakes before him to make his coffee. She doesn’t comment on the fact that he comes home smelling of sex, cigarettes and _men_. A man. Instead, she smiles a smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes, and she asks him about his day with an insincere lilt. She retires to the bedroom, where she sleeps without being touched, or kissed, or even so much as spoken to.

Still, she sits. She sits, and stares, and folds another shirt. She stands, and makes dinner, despite the fact he won’t show his face. She goes to her son’s room; the sound of his snoring breaking the thick silence.

He shifts in his bed, and pulls at the sheets, and murmurs. Trina lulls him, the words of an old, familiar song on her lips. Her voice catches in her throat, and it wavers when she sees so much of him in her child. 

She knows that he’ll grow into his features. The same waves, and the same nose. He has brown eyes, and somehow that calms the waters within her.

A baby wasn’t the plan. She wanted to settle down, marry happily, move into a sweet little house uptown and have a baby or two further down the line. 

Not much went according to plan in her life. 

She’d wound up knocked up at the tender age of twenty three. They were unmarried, and she had hell to pay with her father. The ceremony was quick, and she was a doting bride, with her cheeks still round and glowing. She’d recognised there was nothing behind his eyes that day, but she kissed him lovingly even still.

Her year was just as the year before. She never toed the line, and she never asked questions. She knew he was slipping, and yet she knew much better than to interfere. The rounded cheeks turned gaunt, and she lost the motherly glow. Her eyes had dimmed, and her hair was shorter. 

_‘Much more mature’_ her mother had said.

What she would do to go back to the young woman who was all too happy to stand in a downpour just because the worst it could be was a cold, and she had too much ahead of her to be worried about a cold.

She stands, leaving her son’s room with a soft sigh. It’s twenty minutes to midnight, and her stomach twists. She knows it’ll be another year of bitter tastes in her mouth after not fighting back, and more bruised wrists that her friends mistake for something much more divine than it is, and endless cups of coffee that cater to his taste.

What she wants most in the world is to leave. She wants to leave, and pry her life out of his hands and _run_ with it until her legs give out. 

But she won’t end it. Because her coffee making and her dish duty and her short hair and her son is what’s keeping her together. It’s her sense of stability, and it rips her inside out knowing that.

She stands by the window, and she gazes. There’s nothing to see except the same townhouses she’d seen for seven years. The muffled music from across the street makes her feel like she’s drowning. She is surrounded by people, and yet every look in her direction dismisses the fact her lungs are starting to fill with water. 

It’s ten minutes to midnight now, and she aches. She aches to be wanted, and touched, and cherished. She wants to fight back, and scream, and cause a scene, and break a plate, but that’s not her life. 

Her life is waiting for her husband at ten minutes to midnight. Her life is misplacing her glasses after a bottle of wine. Her life is tightening her fists in the sheets when he promises her intimacy, only for him to give meagre, tasteless thrusts and for her to give him her well practised climax. 

She accepts that as she opens the window, and bitter city air winds her. It stings her lungs and bites her cheeks and for once she’s _feeling_ something. 

She feels how she felt when she was seventeen, with icy air swallowing her whole. She’s the woman who stands in a downpour, and the woman whose smile reaches her eyes, and the woman who is thrilled just to be living. 

She feels the tears behind her eyes, but she’s crying for something that isn’t hers anymore. She knows that when it goes twelve, she’s a step further away from that haze. At twelve, she’s a wife, and a mother, and a respectable jewish daughter, and a woman who’s old enough to know better than to hold onto what has been, and won’t be ever again.

But she holds on. She lets the tears cool on her face, and she lets the chill creep over her frame and embrace her like some sort of cruel comfort. She gives a half smile to the night, and her knuckles turn white against the windowsill.

She is alive at five minutes to twelve on December thirty first, nineteen seventy six. 

The car door closes, and she’s back. The window closes to save any odd looks. She smooths out her hair, and stands by the door for him. It’s clockwork, and it’s vicious. 

He comes through the door wordlessly, and she kisses his cheek. His tight lipped smile is closure. He isn’t drunk. He is unfaithful. He smells of cologne, and a place different from their own. He smells of cigarettes and sex and _a man._

Her fingers play with her nightgown as she watches the way he inspects the room. She never asked why he does that, but she knows. The material between her fingers stings, and she lets go.

The clock goes twelve, and she hears fireworks. She hears cheering, and she knows new relationships are happening, and she knows the world is moving on, and she knows they’ll sing a familiar song.

“Happy new year, my love,” she manages, pressing her forehead against his. He pats her waist, and leaves.

She’s standing in the first minute of 1977, and she hopes this year will be different.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you ever so much for reading! my tumblrs are dotseurats and brandonjblock. any feedback would be very much appreciated


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